What's wrong with Ripple? I am not really familiar with them.
That's a topic for another section of the boards, really. You can read
this blog by BitMex to understand the difference between XRP and real cryptocurrencies.
I've recently read an article about the research of how China has the power to destroy Bitcoin. This research has done by academics from Princeton and Florida International Universities. Although this paper has not officially peer reviewed yet, it included some interesting aspects.
1) "Over 80 percent of Bitcoin mining is performed by six mining pools, with five of those managed directly by individuals or companies based in China"
2) "The primary threat to Bitcoin’s infrastructure is the '51-percent attack,' which consists of mining pools teaming up to control a majority of the hash rate
I'd have expected academics to be smarter. This ridiculous theory only holds true if the individuals contributing to these pools had no free will. China are not the equivalent of "the Borg" from Star Trek. Each person is fully capable of thinking for themselves and directing their hashpower accordingly.
Worse still is when people who
claim that China are a threat to decentralisation decide the best course of action is to resort to a centralised solution to neutralise that supposed threat. But in reality, it is they who are the bigger threat to decentralisation. There are
some people (who I would call utter fuckwits) on this forum who genuinely believe that because they are personally uncomfortable with China's level of contribution to the hashrate, that we should change Bitcoin in an attempt to prevent the use of ASICs or pools and to change Bitcoin's proof-of-work mechanism to something totally experimental and untested. I'd have thought it went without saying that Bitcoin is not centrally planned in that way, so no one should be in a position to determine what percentage of Chinese hashpower is "acceptable". These things are meant to be permissionless. Contribute as much or as little hashpower to the network as you desire, but don't try to restrict others from doing the same.
If we set the precedent that someone gets to decide when any particular region is contributing "
too much" to the hashrate, something has gone badly wrong and freedom is under threat. It's also just a touch sanctimonious to be making arguments about China's totalitarianism if the person saying that would be resorting to the same tactic to fight them.